Simultaneous position and state measurement of Rydberg atoms

Abstract

We present a technique for state-selective position detection of cold Rydberg atoms. Ground state Rb atoms in a magneto-optical trap are excited to a Rydberg state and are subsequently ionized with a tailored electric field pulse. This pulse selectively ionizes only atoms in e.g. the 54d state and not in the 53d state. The released electrons are detected after a slow flight towards a micro channel plate. From the time of flight of the electrons the position of the atoms is deduced. The state selectivity is about 20:1 when comparing 54d with 53d and the one-dimensional position resolution ranges from 6 to 40 $\mu$m over a range of 300 $\mu$m. This state selectivity and position resolution are sufficient to allow for the observation of coherent quantum excitation transport.

References in corpus (6)

• Dipole Blockade and Quantum Information Processing in Mesoscopic Atomic Ensembles
• Fast quantum gates for neutral atoms
• Local Blockade of Rydberg Excitation in an Ultracold Gas
• Suppression of Excitation and Spectral Broadening Induced by Interactions in a Cold Gas of Rydberg Atoms
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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Spatially resolved observation of dipole-dipole interaction between Rydberg atoms
• Observation of Stueckelberg oscillations in dipole-dipole interactions
• Adiabatic entanglement transport in Rydberg aggregates
• Radio-frequency driven dipole-dipole interactions in spatially separated volumes
• Density matrix reconstruction of three-level atoms via Rydberg electromagnetically induced transparency